Famous Quotes Of Free Speech

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”  ―    George Orwell

“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”  ―    Oscar Wilde

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”  ―    George Washington

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”  ―    Theodore Roosevelt

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  ―    Evelyn Beatrice Hall,    The Friends of Voltaire

“Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.”  ―    Neil Gaiman

“Freedom of speech does not protect you from the consequences of saying stupid shit.”  ―    Jim C. Hines

“Free speech means the right to shout ‘theatre’ in a crowded fire.”  ―    Abbie Hoffman

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”  ―    John Milton,    Areopagitica

“It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don’t have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.”  ―    Philip Pullman

“My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.”  ―    Christopher Hitchens

“متهمون نحن بالإرهاب أذا كتبنا عن بقايا وطن … مخلع … مفكك مهترئ أشلاؤه تناثرت أشلاء … عن وطن يبحث عن عنوانه … وأمة ليس لها سماء !! *** عن وطن … يمنعنا ان نشتري الجريدة أو نسمع الأنباء … عن وطن … كل العصافير به ممنوعة دوما من الغناء … عن وطن … كتابه تعودوا أن يكتبوا من شدة الرعب … على الهواء !!”  ―    نزار قباني

“In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.”  ―    Noam Chomsky

“Hypocrites get offended by the truth.”  ―    Jess C. Scott,    Bad Romance: Seven Deadly Sins Anthology

“To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy.”  ―    Aung San Suu Kyi,    Letters from Burma

“Too many adults wish to ‘protect’ teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.”  ―    Margaret A. Edwards

“Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.”  ―    St. Catherine of Siena

“This is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.”  ―    Euripides,    The Phoenician Women

“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.”  ―    Thomas Jefferson

“Beware: open-mindedness will often say, ‘Everything is permissible except a sharp opinion.”  ―    Criss Jami

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they never use.”  ―    Søren Kierkegaard

“Censors never go after books unless kids already like them. I don’t even think they know to go after books until they know that children are interested in reading this book, therefore there must be something in it that’s wrong.”  ―    Judy Blume

“‎”Freedom is fundamentally the possibility of standig on a street corner and shouting “There is no freedom here!”  ―    Yoani Sánchez

“Genuine bravery for a writer…. It is about calmly speaking the truth when everyone else is silenced, when the truth cannot be expressed. It is about speaking out with a different voice, risking the wrath of the state and offending everyone, for the sake of the truth, and the writer’s conscience.”  ―    Murong Xuecun

“If you’re not going to use your free speech to criticize your own government, then what the hell is the point of having it?”  ―    Michel Templet

“If there’s one American belief I hold above all others, it’s that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is “right” and what is “best” should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently.”  ―    Stephen King

“It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.”  ―    Tacitus,    Histories of Tacitus

“It is not certain whether the effects of totalitarianism upon verse need be so deadly as its effects on prose. There is a whole series of converging reasons why it is somewhat easier for a poet than a prose writer to feel at home in an authoritarian society.[...]what the poet is saying- that is, what his poem “means” if translated into prose- is relatively unimportant, even to himself. The thought contained in a poem is always simple, and is no more the primary purpose of the poem than the anecdote is the primary purpose of the picture. A poem is an arrangement of sounds and associations, as a painting is an arrangement of brushmarks. For short snatches, indeed, as in the refrain of a song, poetry can even dispense with meaning altogether.”  ―    George Orwell,    50 Essays

“It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.”  ―    E.A. Bucchianeri,    Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“It is difficult to call myself a writer, even when I stand at a podium to receive a prize, I feel uncomfortable calling myself a writer—I am merely a word criminal.”  ―    Murong Xuecun

“When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe… that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas– that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.  That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.  It is an experiment.  As all life is an experiment.  Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.  ”  ―    Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

“A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that.”  ―    Nick Harkaway,    The Blind Giant

“I wish there is a world where any one can know the truth and speak there mind with freedom without having to fear for their lives (Rinko, Basara, Vol. 13)”  ―    Yumi Tamura,    Basara, Vol. 13

“أعددت قائمة سوداء بكل من تعامل مع هذا النظام خلال 18 يوماً من أعظم أيام جيلنا، بل ومن أعظم أيام العصر الحديث، تعاملوا مع النظام القديم واساؤا إلينا وإلى ثورتنا وقاموا بإهانتنا (…) هذه القائمة التي رحت أعدها لحظة بلحظة طوال الأيام الثمانية عشر التي أشعلنا فيها ثورتنا.. قمت بحذفها منذ دقائق، لإيماني العميق بأن الساعي إلى الحرية لا يقوم بتنصيب محاكم التفتيش للآخرين ولا يسعى إلى تصفية حسابات مع البعض سواء يعرفهم بشكل شخصي أو تضرر منهم في الإطار العام، وأن وصم البعض بآرائهم هو فعل ينتمي إلى نظام حسني مبارك بامتياز ويجب ألا نسمح لأفعال هذا النظام بالتسرب مجدداً لتلوث روحنا التي تطهرت بوهج ثورتنا العظيمة.”  ―    Ihab Omar,    الثورة المصرية الكبرى

“The only truth is that we cannot speak the truth . The only acceptable viewpoint is that we cannot express a viewpoint.”  ―    Murong Xuecun

“Why is contemporary China short of works that speak directly? Because we writers cannot speak directly, or rather we can only speak in an indirect way.
Why does contemporary China lack good works that critique our current situation? Because our current situation may not be critiqued. We have not only lost the right to criticise, but the courage to do so.
Why is modern China lacking in great writers? Because all the great writers are castrated while still in the nursery.”  ―    Murong Xuecun

“Unfortunately, I have dedicated great effort to the task of compiling this ‘sensitive words glossary,’ and I have mastered my filtering skills. I knew which words and sentences had to be cut, and I accepted the cutting as if that was the way it should be. In fact, I will often take it on myself to save time and cut a few words. I call this ‘castrated writing’ -—I am a proactive eunuch, I have already castrated myself before the surgeon raises his scalpel.”  ―    Murong Xuecun

“A constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom.”  ―    U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Because at this time, in this place, Chinese writing exhibits symptoms of a mental disorder.”  ―    Murong Xuecun

“Actually, I am a coward. I say only what is safe to say, and I criticise only what is permissable to criticise.”  ―    Murong Xuecun

“Imagination sees the complete reality, – it is where past, present and future meet… Imagination is limited neither to the reality which is apparent – nor to one place. It lives everywhere. It is at a centre and feels the vibrations of all the circles within which east and west are virtually included. Imagination is the life of mental freedom. It realizes what everything is in its many aspects … Imagination does not uplift: we don’t want to be uplifted, we want to be more completely aware.”  ―    Kahlil Gibran

“Why is it that other will say that “You have no Brain dumbass”. ? Well, try to find the dumbest person in the World, Then break his/her head if you can’t see his/her brain. All people that you called Dumb doesn’t mean that they have no brain. They’re just experiencing lack of Education, Uncivilized, and most of all, Having insufficient funds to sustain their knowledge.”  ―    Yods Pegoro

“The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.”  ―    John Paul Stevens

“Democracy was supposed to champion freedom of speech, and yet the simple rules of table decorum could clamp down on the rights their forefathers had fought and died for.”  ―    E.A. Bucchianeri,    Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“Money is property; it is not speech.”  ―    John Paul Stevens

“Beyond all the other reasons not to do it, free speech assaults always backfire: they transform bigots into martyrs.”  ―    Glenn Greenwald